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Hector Gonzalez · Portfolio

Hector
Gonzalez.

Full-Stack Engineer · Front End · Applied AI

Product-minded full-stack engineer, strongest on the front end, who ships AI features.

Six years across a large bank's web properties and a production edtech platform I co-architected and now run for ~24,000 users. I own the whole product: React and Next.js front ends, data, auth, CI/CD, monitoring, and the AI pipeline that cut lesson production from about a week to 10–30 minutes.

See selected workGet in touchWhat I'm working onnow
Hector Gonzalez portrait
Charlotte, NCBuilding
Proof
Users
~24K
On The Notwork, the platform I co-architected and run
Lesson build time
30 min
Down from about a week, with a nine-step AI pipeline
Playable games
10
Built solo in Pixi.js and Three.js
Graduates placed
100+
Of the roughly 130 career changers I taught
Capabilities

What I work on,
and what I work with.

Front-end product engineering is the depth, applied AI is the specialty, and the rest of the stack is the breadth that lets me own a product on my own. These are the tools I actually reach for.

Front end

Product interfaces in React and Next.js, from design systems to 2D and 3D games.

TypeScriptReactNext.jsTailwind CSSshadcn/uiFramer Motion

Applied AI

AI features inside real products, with a person reviewing what the model produces.

AI SDKClaudeMCPMulti-step pipelinesHuman-in-the-loop reviewStructured outputs

Back end & platform

Everything behind the interface, owned end to end on a small team.

Node.jsBunPostgreSQLDrizzle ORMRedisZod
Selected work

Production platforms, applied AI,and games people actually play.

All projects
Screenshot of The Notwork
Production Platform

The Notwork

~24K

Users

Co-architect · led the build team · sole maintainer since Oct 2025

Production edtech platform where North Carolina high schoolers learn, play, and compete in STEM and skilled-trades programs.

TypeScriptReactNext.jsPostgreSQLDrizzle ORM
LiveCase study: The Notwork
Screenshot of AI Curriculum Pipeline
Applied AI System

AI Curriculum Pipeline

10–30 min

Per lesson, was ~1 week

Sole designer and engineer

A nine-step AI pipeline, with a human review point at every step, that turns a rough lesson idea into a published, multi-modal lesson in 10–30 minutes.

TypeScriptNext.jsAI SDKClaudeGPT
Case study: AI Curriculum Pipeline
Screenshot of Skilled-Trades Games
Playable Game Suite

Skilled-Trades Games

10

Playable games

Sole designer and engineer

Ten playable browser games that teach skilled-trades work through short, scored scenarios. Built solo in Pixi.js and Three.js.

TypeScriptPixi.jsThree.jsNext.jsReact
LiveCase study: Skilled-Trades Games
Experience

Where I've built and shipped recently.

Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Aug 2023 – Present

Stiegler EdTech· Charlotte, NC

Notwork users
~24K
Lessons published
55
Games shipped
11
  • Co-architected The Notwork (Next.js, React 19, TypeScript): ~24K users, ~490K views, peak ~1K daily active users.
  • Sole maintainer and product owner since Oct 2025, after leading the team through a 2025 rebuild: schema redesign, notifications, pagination, error handling and logging, and hundreds of regression tests.
  • Built a nine-step AI curriculum pipeline on the Vercel AI SDK with a human review point at every step. Cut lesson production from about a week to 10–30 minutes; 55 lessons published.
  • Built AI-assisted rubric grading and designed teacher-as-verifier identity verification for in-person competition.
  • Designed and shipped 11 browser games solo in Pixi.js and Three.js, 10 of them for a skilled-trades workforce program.
  • Stood up org-wide AI tooling (a Claude team workspace, MCP integrations into the platform) and trained staff on it.
  • Led five developers through the initial build: hired the team, set coding standards, reviewed PRs weekly, and refined tickets with product and design.
TypeScriptReactNext.jsBunDrizzle ORMPostgreSQLVercelCloudflare

Co-founder & Director of Curriculum and Programming

Mar 2022 – Aug 2023

Stiegler EdTech· Charlotte, NC

Graduates placed
100+
Adults taught
~130
Cohort years
3
  • Wrote the curriculum and taught daily as the sole instructor: about 130 adults across three years of cohorts (two teaching, one supervising), over half of the program's ~200 graduates.
  • Over 100 of them were placed in full-time roles at Charlotte's major employers, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Lowe's, Ally, Coca-Cola Consolidated, and Truist.
  • Led a four-person curriculum team on a contracted cohort build for an external client.
  • Worked with corporate sponsors so cohorts launched with the curriculum their hiring pipelines needed.
  • Set up hiring, onboarding, and program operations as the company scaled from its founding.
Curriculum designWorkforce developmentProgram operationsTeachingMentorshipTypeScriptReactNode.js
See the full background
How I work

Ambiguity in. Useful systems out.

  1. 01

    Scope the real problem

    Most asks come in vague. I sit with the actual problem, the constraints, and the people involved before suggesting a build.

  2. 02

    Design the smallest useful system

    I prefer clean architecture, modern serverless tools, and a path that's maintainable by a small team — not the most clever option.

  3. 03

    Ship it, then keep it alive

    I build to run in production: tests, error handling, logging, and monitoring, plus the AI workflows and internal tools that keep a product working after launch.

Get in touch

Have a problem worth building for?

Reach out about roles, collaborations, or interesting builds. Email is the fastest way in.

Email meRead the long version